Thursday, January 28, 2016

How Taiwan activists use technology

"Taiwan has been at the forefront of digital democratization for some
time. In 2012, Taiwanese netizens created alternative, crowdsourced .g0v
(a number 0 where an O would otherwise be) versions of Government websites where they released data in formats that helped people more easily understand what government ministries were doing.

Audrey Tang (Isis Kang/CC BY-NC-ND)

'Most of the technologies we have deployed in Taiwan were neutral;
they were intended to encourage people to talk, that’s all. We had a
very strong code of neutrality,' said Audrey Tang, a self-professed 'conservative anarchist,' and member of g0v.tw, now a civic movement aiming for true, participatory self-government.
Youth leaders, g0v.tw, and other hacktivists all came together last
year when the Government’s move to limit public debate on a trade deal
with China angered citizens upset at the blatant disregard for democracy
and potentially adverse economic impacts. In just a few days, this
morphed into a mass movement.
Technology played a key role from the very beginning. During the
movement, a central web portal was used as a common entry point for
information on the movement. A host of mostly open-source, hosted tools
were used in the portal to network, engage, and empower activists."